


Irregular Correspondence

by orphan_account



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale vs modern technology, Godparents Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), M/M, Pining, Slow Burn, based on my solitary good tumblr post, ish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-06-29 20:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19838011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley may have been godparenting the wrong child for eleven years, but that just means they've had plenty of practice for when Adam decides he wants them to be a part of his life.Somehow, they aren't any better this time around.





	1. Fancy patter on the telephone

**Author's Note:**

> This started because I made a post a little while back on tumblr about Adam keeping in touch with Crowley and Aziraphale after armageddon, which somehow got popular? And then I started writing a thing because I have no self control. This is a mashup of book/show/radio canon, as well as anything else that makes the story fit, because I feel that is very in the spirit of good omens.
> 
> I don't really really have any idea where this is headed or if I'll ever manage to finish a WIP, am genuinely just here for a laff

Children tended to quite like Aziraphale. None of them could ever really put their finger on why – he wasn’t particularly cool, or interesting, or funny. But despite all of that – and their own better judgement – children still flocked to him. They weren’t to know, of course, that it was the deep sense of safety he naturally radiated1. Safety was one of those things that all children desperately need, often without realising – like vegetables, and bedtimes.

So it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to Crowley when he’d answered the shop phone with a drawled _A Z Fell and co, and if it’s books you’re after try somewhere else,_ and Adam replied with a bright,

“Oh! You’re the demon, aren’t you!”

“Ack,” said Crowley. He was quite impressed with himself. His brain had come to such an abrupt halt that he shouldn’t have been capable of making any noise at all. There was a pause as he rebooted, and then he very slowly and very cautiously leaned away from the receiver to call to the back room.

“Angel,” he said, a thin note of panic trembling in his voice. He waited a couple of seconds and tried again, more forcefully.

Aziraphale popped his head far enough around the door to frown at him.

“I heard you the first time dear, there’s really no need for such a racket,” he said disapprovingly.

“The antichrist is on the phone,” Crowley said all in a rush, waving the handset he _still hadn’t put down_. There was a bang as the light above them exploded with Aziraphale’s shock. Crowley fixed it with an absent gesture.

“ _What_?” Aziraphale spluttered. He sagged against the door for a moment like it was the only thing still holding him upright, before staggering to Crowley’s side on legs that looked a little too wobbly for comfort. “Whatever for?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t ask!” Crowley hissed, and before Aziraphale had time to berate him for his manners2, he lifted the phone back to his ear. It sounded like Adam was stifling a laugh.

It was a perfectly normal-sounding laugh. Very human, very childlike, and only a little bit malicious in much the same way most pre-pubescent laughter is a little bit malicious. Shivers still raced down Crowley’s spine.

“Um. What, er. To what do we owe the, hm, pleasure?” Crowley asked stiffly. Adam managed to get his giggles under control.

“Jus’ wanted to check in, really,” he said. Aziraphale, by now, had pressed himself against Crowley’s side; nominally so that he could listen to both sides of the conversation, but also because Crowley looked worryingly close to fainting. There was a reason that humans had popularised the saying ‘knock me down with a feather’, and that reason was the two of them.

“Check in?” Aziraphale asked cautiously. He somehow managed to give the air of using quotation marks while still sounding remarkably serious, and without moving his hands.

“Mr. Angel! Hi!”

“Hello dear boy,” Aziraphale replied, quite on autopilot. Crowley shot him a look that was no doubt wide-eyed behind his glasses.

“Check in?” Crowley repeated faintly.

“Well I just wanted to make sure everything was OK with you,” Adam said. “You know, that no-one had come after you two, and your shop’s alright, and the car.”

“Yes, it’s all fine here.” Aziraphale exchanged a panicked glance with Crowley, who shrugged expressively. He was quite good at getting meaning across with expressive gestures. “And yourself? I trust there are no lingering, er, issues, as it were?”

“Oh no, no issues,” Adam said cheerfully. “I’m still grounded for being at the airbase, but Mum said I can go to Anathema’s house tomorrow for tea and to drop off her magazines. And I used the time to start writing my new book! It’s _sort of_ an autobiography, and _sort of_ a graphic novel, and _Pepper_ says I should make it a satirical comment on modern morality, but I don’t think I know how to do that. Anathema said she wants to read it first when I’m done, but you can have it second if you want?”

Aziraphale opened and closed his mouth uselessly a couple of times. Adam waited patiently on the other end of the line.

“I’m sure that’ll be wonderful,” he croaked.

“Great!” Adam didn’t seem to have noticed the tone. “I have to go now, Dad says I have to do all the dishes as _well_ as being stuck inside, and he’ll get mad if I leave them much longer. I’ll phone sometime next week? I’m going to need your help with some of the early stuff for the book. Buh-bye Mr. Angel! Mr. Demon!”

He hung up. Crowley stared at the receiver in his hand, and slowly replaced it on its cradle.

There was a lengthy pause.

There have been innumerable lengthy pauses throughout history. There were even several lengthy pauses before history, though it becomes somewhat difficult to determine the length of a pause when sound has yet to be invented and most communication is in the form of benevolent angelic intent. Since the beginning of time and space, however, lengthy pauses have been known to vary wildly in cause, purpose, participation, and – of course – length.

This was not the lengthiest by a long shot3.

It was, perhaps, the most charged. The most anti-climactic. The most communicative.

Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Who’s to say?

Eventually, Aziraphale made his unsteady way to the back room. Crowley stood up to follow, and had to take a moment as his heart kick-started again. He hadn’t even realised he’d stopped it at the first word out of Adam’s mouth. Once all of his blood was circulating as it should, he slunk after Aziraphale into the room that currently resembled a serviceable kitchenette.

“I’m putting the kettle on, dear,” Aziraphale announced, his voice far steadier than his hands.

“Make mine Irish,” Crowley said automatically. Aziraphale nodded, already distractedly rooting around in cupboards that spent half of their existence on another plane of reality entirely. They’d gotten used to it by now, and these days barely even squeaked their hinges in disapproval.

There was a somewhat less lengthy pause.

So that. Happened,” Crowley said finally, mug of coffee in one hand, his head in the other.

“Quite,” Aziraphale agreed, sitting heavily at the table. Crowley joined him, dragging a chair around to his side and making sure the legs screeched unpleasantly across the tiles the whole way. Old habits, and all that.

Just outside the range of human perception, a large, glossy wing spread wide – a very tempting offer, and one that Aziraphale gladly succumbed to. He tucked himself close against Crowley’s side, rubbing his palms anxiously together. Neither of them acknowledged this.

“One thing I don’t get,” Crowley said, taking a burning swig of his drink – it was both far too hot and _exceedingly_ alcoholic, which was just how Crowley liked it. Aziraphale had progressed from rubbing his hands to curling them around his mug, and was instead tapping his heels.

“What’s that?” He asked.

“How did the boy even get the shop’s number? I _know_ it isn’t on the internet anywhere, I made sure of it.”

Beside him, Aziraphale was silent. The tapping increased until his legs were almost vibrating. A tell-tale red flush had started to creep its way up his neck until he appeared to realise what was happening, and it sheepishly crept back down. Crowley, who was staring contemplatively into his mug, didn’t notice.

“It’s not even in the phone book, I remember _you_ took care of that.”

“Yes, well, I suppose it’s possible that-”

“I mean, I suppose he knew enough to restore it in the first place – maybe he changed the number? No, no I’ve phoned you since then, it was definitely the same number.”

“Oh, no, surely he wouldn’t do something like-”

“Maybe that witch had it somewhere in her prophecy book? ‘And to contacte the Prinfipalitee, thou muft diale’, or something.”

“I gave him my card!” Aziraphale blurted. He hung his head wretchedly when Crowley turned incredulous eyes on him. His next words were mumbled to the table.

“I just wanted to make sure he had a way of contacting us in case everything went terribly wrong again! So while you were talking to dear Anathema and her young man, I gave him one of the shop’s cards and said ‘here you go, this is for emergencies only, but it’d probably be a good idea for you to have a way to get in touch in case Heaven and Hell decide they want to try anything.’ I never thought he’d actually _use_ it!”

He eyed Crowley worriedly.

“You don’t think it was too terrible a mistake, do you?”

Crowley sighed, and though he would deny it on pain of discorporation, curled his wing a little tighter around Aziraphale’s metaphysical frame. Hundreds of eyes shut all at once, and then blinked open blearily.

“You’re an angel,” he said finally. Lightly. “I’m not sure it’s actually possible for you to do the wrong thing.”

Aziraphale offered him a hesitant, but nonetheless beatific, smile.

“Oh, _thank you_ my dear,” he said. Crowley muttered something that might have been _you’re welcome_ , and might have been _drink your tea._ Demons are, after all, terribly good at muttering.

* * *

1 – And even if they had known, they would have denied it. Most children liked to think of themselves as thrill-seekers

2 – Shockingly bad for a human, appallingly good for a demon

3 – Though that honour still went to Aziraphale and Crowley, not that either of them realised such. They didn’t like to think about that time overmuch


	2. Read any good telephone books lately?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale gets with the times - somewhat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started as kind of established relationship in my mind, and has somehow regressed into slow burn/pining as far as A/C goes, oops. This chapter is also called Aziraphale vs modernish technology
> 
> I'm still working on the footnotes thing but it is 1 in the morning and I have work tomorrow so today is not the day

It was a pleasant enough day. The sun occasionally broke through the patchy clouds that had been hanging around all week, the grass in the park was freshly cut, and Crowley had been finding ways to entertain himself since he arrived a few minutes ago. Currently, he was strategically miracling piles of dog waste into areas with a lot of foot traffic<sup>4</sup> and watching the play of fury/disgust/betrayal play out on people’s faces as they hopped around on one foot trying to inspect their shoes.

He wasn’t sure if this came under the umbrella of ‘messing people around’, but even if it did, he wasn’t doing it with any sort of Hellish intent. He really was just very bored. It was the sort of motivation that he reckoned an eleven-year-old could get behind.

And wasn’t that novel – having to think up ways to justify himself to a human-adjacent child. Hell had always been happy enough with the vaguely-worded reports he sent the, and as long as he kept his numbers up at a reasonable level, they never bothered to look into things further. Crowley had a nasty feeling that Adam would _check_.

It had taken a couple of weeks to get used to, but Crowley hoped that Adam would be willing to forgive the odd slip-up here or there during the adjustment period. Six thousand years in the same job resulted in some pretty ingrained habits and routines; suddenly going cold-turkey was a lot harder than Crowley had anticipated, and _besides_ , it wasn’t in his nature to deny himself. It was a crucial part of being a demon. _And_ , Crowley told himself, most of his miracles these days weren’t about _tempting_ people, just about making his own life run that little bit smoother. No-one ever noticed5, and surely he put enough – ugh – good back into the world to balance the whole thing out?

Or Aziraphale did, at least.

Evidently the angel’s good deeds for the day didn’t include punctuality, Crowley noted sourly. He had arrived a few minutes late as normal, expecting to find Aziraphale on their usual bench, thermos full of tea on the bench beside him as he scanned through the Sunday paper. But there was no angel to be seen, and Crowley had been left to sprawl menacingly across the bench on his own.

He was quite good at menacing sprawls. It was possible he’d invented them, or at the very least, been the one to refine the concept and introduce it to Earth. On a bad day, this simply consisted of taking up a great deal of space for a human-shaped being, exuding a prickly aura, and making sure that anyone who stepped too close to him had Second Thoughts about it. On a good day, he might add a slightly worrying stench of smoke, and a very impressive glower. It wasn’t often that he worked himself up enough to get a really fearsome glower going, but it was absolutely worth it when he did.

Today was a good day.

About ten minutes after he really hit his stride with the glowering6, he finally felt something familiar brush against the edge of his awareness.

That was another new thing. There had always been a part of him – small and consistently ignored, but present nonetheless – that had been aware of Aziraphale. Not aware in the way two man-shaped beings might quietly share a room together and be aware of one another, despite not acknowledging the other’s presence; comfortable and familiar. Nor was it aware in the way a person in a crowd might be aware that there is someone, somewhere, staring very hard at the back of their head; a tingling down one’s spine. Rather, it was aware in the way that someone who always wears a watch or wedding band might be aware of it; forgotten until it catches the light, and only notable if absent.

His awareness of Aziraphale now was almost blinding. Vast and all-consuming, and absolutely impossible to ignore. The only way, Crowley had found, to cope with the sudden Aziraphale-shaped space in his being was to not think about it, and just let his tattered Grace do as it damn well pleased. And today, it damn well pleased to let him know that Aziraphale was coming, he was almost there, he was walking across the park, and –

Crowley glanced up casually as Aziraphale rounded the corner, all traces of his menacing sprawl slipping from his frame. Now he slouched comfortably, and raised a hand in a little half-wave.

Aziraphale didn’t wave back, apparently utterly absorbed by whatever he was clutching so carefully in his hands. Crowley squinted and lowered his hand a little foolishly.

“Aziraphale?” He said finally, when it looked as though the angel might walk straight past him. Aziraphale stopped so abruptly that it looked as though he would topple over, scuffed shoes kicking up gravel as he spun to stare at Crowley as though seeing him for the first time in a century.

“Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry dear boy, I was off in my own world there.” He chuckled nervously, and sat down beside Crowley; far closer than he ever used to, Crowley noted, close enough that their arms pressed together from shoulder to elbow, and their ankles could tangle if Aziraphale didn’t sit with his heels tucked neatly beneath him. His hands folded carefully in his lap, still clinging to something.

Pushing his glassed up onto his head, Crowley frowned down at Aziraphale’s hands. He was fairly sure that he wasn’t actually seeing what he thought he was seeing, but unfortunately his eyes were being stubborn, and all he could see was some sort of ghastly flip-phone being twisted between plump fingers.

Crowley hadn’t realised they still existed outside of early-noughties sitcoms.

“Angel,” he said slowly. Aziraphale hummed in that manner he had that meant he knew exactly where Crowley was going, and no intentions of making it easy for him. “Aziraphale, what is that?”

“Well I would have thought that would be obvious,” Aziraphale said, sounding for all the world like he didn’t see the problem here.

“Because it looks like an abomination,” Crowley said. “An affront to technology. An insult to the modern age. I’ve seen demons that haven’t been up top since the fourteenth century with better phones than that.” Aziraphale sniffed haughtily at him, and didn’t reply. “Since when do you have a phone?”

“Since this morning, if you must know,” Aziraphale huffed. “Adam was _quite_ insistent that I get one so that he can send me _text messages_ , and it seemed so much easier to just go along with him. I popped over to the shop this morning, and Erika – such a dear thing, their mother is in hospital you know, they’re working _and_ taking care of their younger brothers, I thought I might try to do something nice for them, oh _don’t_ give me that look, it hardly counts as messing someone about, I’m sure Adam would be happy to overlook it. Where was I?”

Angels, on the whole, tended to have excellent memories. It wasn’t that Crowley thought Aziraphale was the exception – rather that he was so good at distracting himself he sometimes didn’t realise what had come out of his mouth in the first place, leaving him incapable of actually _remembering_ it.

“You’d popped into the shop,” Crowley said flatly.

“Yes, of course! Well, I told Erika that I needed a phone so that I could keep in touch with – well, I told them my godson, only I’d never had to use a mobile7 before, and really wasn’t sure what I was looking for. And they said this would be just the thing, and got it all set up for me!”

The worst part was, Crowley could see it playing out behind his eyes as the angel spoke. Could see the bubbly customer-service smile; the way eyes would sweep Aziraphale and take in hair that could be blond or white depending on the day; would note the lines at the corners of his eyes and the clothes that had been out of style when he bought them however long ago; would hear the cautious pronunciation of ‘text message’ and leap to conclusions that were both perfectly true and wildly incorrect. Could so easily envisage this human taking Aziraphale past the sleek touchscreens, past the tablets, thinking they were doing him a favour.

There was no way for him to articulate any of this to Aziraphale, however, so he had to settle for,

“Twenty years I’ve been trying to talk you into getting a phone, but the child can manage it in two weeks?”

Aziraphale glanced at him, mouth already curling around a sharp retort before he caught sight of Crowley’s face.

Crowley had no idea what he saw there, but he was fairly sure he wouldn’t like it.

“Well I never needed one before,” he said, voice softer than before. “I could always reach you with the shop phone, and we’ve never had any trouble finding each other, in the grand scheme of things.”

Well, Crowley couldn’t quite agree with _that_ , the most notable example having occurred only a few weeks ago and involving rather more fire than he was comfortable with, but he didn’t say anything.

“Let’s see it then,” Crowley said, holding out an impatient hand. Aziraphale didn’t hesitate before placing the phone cautiously in Crowley’s lax grip.

Crowley couldn’t stop the amused hiss that curled between his teeth as he flipped the phone open.

There were two names listed under Aziraphale’s contacts; Adam and Crowley. He was a little disappointed to find that it didn’t come pre-loaded with snake, but an arch look quickly took care of that. The phone also found itself rather bemusedly connecting to 4G, despite being fairly sure it hadn’t previously had the capability8.

It then found itself rather distracted from this mystery by an incoming request.

“Adam’s facetiming you,” Crowley said blankly. Adam hadn’t facetimed _him_ , and he’d had a phone for decades. It was the same phone, of course, but he liked to update it every so often. Currently it was a pleasingly fragile sheet of glass and matte black metal, with more processing power than it knew what to reasonably do with.

“He’s _what_?” Aziraphale asked, crowding against his side to peer down at the phone. Crowley subtly leaned his head back until Aziraphale was almost tucked under his chin.

“Facetiming – like a phone call with video. Should I accept?”

Aziraphale made a ‘go on’ motion. Crowley went on.

This phone also shouldn’t have been able to play or take high-definition videos – in fact, a few short minutes ago, it hadn’t been able to take any sort of video – but Adam hadn’t known that when he’d called, so it came through just fine nonetheless. In Crowley’s hand, the phone was starting to feel worryingly warm.

“Good afternoon,” Aziraphale smiled as soon as Adam’s face came up on the tiny screen. They could hear the hellhound barking in the background, and the clamouring of Adam’s friends as they pushed at each other to get close enough to see the screen.

“Hi Aziraphale, hi Crowley!” Adam said.

“Checking in again?” Crowley asked around a throat that was suddenly a little bit dry. He had to stop himself from angling a defensive wing across the angel’s shoulders. Aziraphale seemed perfectly relaxed, after all. Adam blinked guilelessly at him, as though Crowley would fall for a trick as old at that. He would’ve invented blinking guilelessly if it hadn’t taken him so long to get the hang of eyelids.

“Not unless I need to,” he said. “Why, have you been messing people around?”

“Only each other,” Aziraphale said, and though he was clearly referring to the odd miracle here and there in the comfort and privacy of their own homes, Crowley still choked a bit.

There was a chorus of _told you!_ s in the background of the call.

“Gross,” said Adam gleefully. “But no, I was calling because we have a question, and also Brian didn’t believe me that you’re _actually_ an angel and a demon, so I wanted to prove it.”

“Because the airfield wasn’t proof enough?” Aziraphale asked, and for a being of unconditional love, he sounded terribly judgemental.

“I wasn’t paying attention to you then!” Shouted one of the boys in the background. “There was a lot going on!”

“Fair enough,” Crowley conceded. He turned to Aziraphale. “Hang onto the phone a second.”

Aziraphale, long accustomed to Crowley’s antics, took the phone and held it carefully away from himself. Though he’d never tried it himself, the angel was quite aware of the sorts of things Crowley was capable of with a phone, even one that had no wires.

Crowley, meanwhile, had taken a deep breath and hurled himself through the phone. The hellhound bit his leg almost as soon as he landed on the mulchy ground, but given that it currently didn’t come up much higher than his ankle, it was less of a concern than it might have normally been. The three human children stared at him with wide, delighted eyes, while the antichrist had taken on the sort of cunning expression that would make even a duke of Hell whimper. Crowley, having spent eleven years in close proximity to a human child, merely froze.

“Is that quite good enough?” He heard Aziraphale ask. “Or does he need to break out the wings again?”

Four sets of pleading eyes turned immediately towards him.

“No, nope, no no, that’s it,” Crowley snapped, turning and diving back the way he came. “Show’s over kids, what was the question?”

“Oh,” Adam said, and turned to hurriedly confer with his little conspirators. Crowley tried not to scowl too obviously, then realised that he could scowl as obviously as he pleased, even with Aziraphale shaking his head disapprovingly.

“Don’t ‘member,” Adam finally said brightly as he turned back to them. “I’ll text later when I do. Bye Aziraphale! Bye Crowley!”

“Ciao,” Crowley replied automatically, though the screen had already gone dark. Aziraphale flipped it shut and tucked it carefully into his breast pocket.

(And if, when Adam texted Crowley while he and the angel were bickering over tapas to ask if he could do the phone trick to bring the Them pizza whenever they wanted, Crowley spent two minutes spluttering with laughter before he replied, well. That was no-one business but his own.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4 - Though not, it is important to note, where there were any children nearby. Watching adults throw up their hands and awkwardly shuffle across the grass to try and wipe their shoes clean was funny. Risking the eyesight of clumsy children was not 
> 
> 5 – Crowley wasn’t to know it, but this had less to do with his demonic wiles, and more to do with the fact that sometimes life in London is just like that. There were a lot of things that people in London carefully didn’t notice
> 
> 6 – At least five young couples had started to head his way, had an abrupt change of heart, and turned to leave at around twice the speed the arrived; one gap-toothed young girl had tugged at the leg of his trousers to ask why he looked so sad, because young girls do not fear God or Death
> 
> 7 – Until this point in time, Crowley hadn’t realised it was possible to make mobile sound like a rude word
> 
> 8 – This, unlike snake, was not on purpose. Crowley just tended to forget that not every phone that passed through his hands had perfect signal and internet at all times

**Author's Note:**

> OK, was anyone ever going to tell me that it's not only expected but encouraged to reply to comments? I always felt like I'd sound a right pillock, mostly because I always sound like a right pillock. I'm going to be doing that from now on, and if I ever didn't reply to a comment in the past, know that it wasn't you, I am just an oblivious idiot
> 
> (And if anyone knows how to make the footnotes do the linky thing, hit me up)


End file.
